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Talking About Credit Cards For a New Year

It’s the holiday season, and the year is slowly coming to a close. Now is definitely the time to check out all things finance, even though it might not seem that way. There are many banks and lenders in the UK that will be practically giving away money, and it’s up to you to check them out. Do you need a new credit card? Believe it or not, the answer might be yes. Let’s go back into things a bit to really give you the full picture around the issue.

You see, it’s all about being able to get the best credit terms without having to spend a lot of money overall. If you’re still dealing with the same credit cards that you opened up years ago, you might qualify for lower interest rates. This means that more of your monthly payment will go to what you actually charged and not just the interest. The trouble with high interest cards is that so much of the minimum monthly payment is going to pay the credit card company itself, not necessarily for the things that you bought. Smart credit management means looking at these things as a way to get the full benefit out of them. That’s the true issue of the matter, and you need to take it seriously.

What if you’ve cleaned up your credit in the last few years? Believe it or not, new offers aren’t just going to come to your door. It’s possible, but if you’re not already being targeted on several mailing lists or you’ve chosen to opt out of that system, you really have to make sure that you’re looking at the best offers in the market. If you apply for multiple credit cards in a tight window, you should avoid making heavy damage to your credit score. Sometimes having too many credit inquiries on your reference file can be a big problem, but when done in a short window, the damage is lessened sharply.

Do you travel often? A rewards card might make sense for your needs. There are a lot of people that go only on the advertising alone, and that’s a really bad way to select credit cards for the upcoming financial year. You want to go with a card that has features that matter to your lifestyle. If you don’t do a lot of traveling, all of the miles in the world aren’t going to do you any good. However, if you can turn miles into points that can be used in other places, that’s going to be much more beneficial to your life.

There’s no need to think that you have to carry around five or six cards. Just apply for one or two cards in the upcoming months could help you out. Be sure that you’re looking at the fine print. For example, if you’re trying to transfer balances in order to save some money, you should remember that there’s going to be a fee on that transfer. Unless they’re explicitly telling you that there’s no balance transfer fee for a set amount of time, then you need to ask what those fees are.

This is also the case with the interest rates — if there’s a zero percent interest rate, it’s probably for a set amount of months. It can be a lengthy period of time, but you still need to know what that time is going to be. The rate that it adjusts to could be a bit higher than you expected. Everything offered to you is based on your unique credit information. So just because the advertisement says that you’re eligible for 9 percent, it doesn’t mean that it’s what you’re going to get.

As long as you’re thinking critically about credit cards, you will finish ahead of those that don’t. That’s really all there is to it.